The Shaykh’s explanation of some of the reasons for the disagreement of the mujtahids in the rulings of Islamic sacred law.

The Shaykh : So what is the reason for the disagreement of the leading mujtahids in the rulings of Islamic sacred law? These differences have many reasons, but among them are two fundamental, essential reasons that are appropriate to mention. The first is that one person comes across a hadith and the other does not. So the one who came across the hadith, when asked about the ruling contained in the hadith, issues a ruling based on it and is correct. The other one, who did not come across the hadith, exercises independent legal reasoning and errs in the ruling because he did not come across the hadith.
Another reason is that both may have come across the hadith, but one understood it in one way and the other understood it in another way. This difference in understanding often goes back to the first reason. It is perhaps good to give an example of this. The famous hadith in the two Sahihs and others is . A written question came to us, among many questions, asking: “A group interprets the hadith as ‘no complete prayer,’ while others say ‘no valid prayer.’ What is the reason?” I say now that the hadith is authentic according to everyone. is a suitable example for the second reason, which is the difference in understanding. Why did they differ in the ruling? Because the Hanafis understood it as “no complete prayer,” while the Shafi'is and others understood it as “no valid prayer.” What is the reason for the disagreement? It also goes back to another text in which they differed in understanding. And it is not appropriate to mention this disagreement regarding that other text here, because it is the Qur'an, and it is the saying of Allah the Exalted: . When some erred in understanding this verse, they were compelled, as a result of this error, to fall into another error, namely the error in understanding the aforementioned hadith. The verse does not mean what appears from the phrase alone; rather, its meaning is surprising to one who has no knowledge, naturally, and it is the meaning of , meaning “pray what is easy for you of the night prayer.” How did we derive this meaning from the context of the verses? All the verses speak of standing in night prayer. How do the verses say this?

The questioner : .

The Shaykh : meaning standing in night prayer "Pray what is easy for you of the night prayer." This is what all the exegetes agreed upon; there is absolutely no disagreement among them, neither Hanafi nor Shafi'i. But it is very regrettable, and this is one of the effects of sectarian fanaticism and rigid imitation, that this verse in the books of exegesis has the meaning you heard, "So pray," but when the one who specializes in the Hanafi school comes along, as if he forgets what the exegetes agreed upon regarding the meaning of this verse, he says: "It is established by the Qur'an that the obligatory recitation in prayer is any recitation, because Allah said And based on that, they say: Since the Qur'an is definitive in its establishment, it is not permissible to specify it with a solitary hadith, because, as they claim, it conveys only probability. Therefore, in their opinion, it is not permissible to apply the probable to the definitive. And I said this in the printed treatise on the issue of the solitary hadith, and in my lessons: this philosophy is foreign to Islam. The classification of hadiths into definitive in establishment and probable in establishment, and the arrangement of the difference in rulings between what is probable in establishment and what is definitive in establishment, is a foreign matter in Islam. And one of its effects is this issue we are discussing. First, it is a Qur'anic text, and second, they misunderstood the apparent text, detached from the context and what precedes it. And third, they said: This is Qur'an, and it is not permissible to specify it with a solitary hadith. Yet the Imam of Imams, truly, refuted them in the hadith, and that is al-Bukhari. He explicitly stated in his specific treatise on recitation behind the imam: "The report has become mass-transmitted from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)..." He judges the hadith as mass-transmitted. So if the distinction between mass-transmitted hadith and solitary hadith in rulings were valid, the argument would stand specifically for this hadith, that it is suitable to specify this verse, because it is a mass-transmitted hadith. But look: the verse has absolutely no relation to this research, and the hadith is mass-transmitted, not a solitary hadith. Nevertheless, the one who previously understood... on its apparent meaning, and this verse does not need to be specified by the hadith. So what do we do with the hadith? Do we nullify the hadith absolutely because the hadith is solitary? He said: We do not act upon it, and we rule it with a ruling that does not conflict with the verse. So we say that reciting al-Fatihah is obligatory, not that it is a pillar. Because if we said that al-Fatihah is a pillar, we would contradict the verse, in their claim. But if we say that reciting al-Fatihah is obligatory, we do not strike the verse, and we take the verse on its apparent meaning, and we take the hadith, and we say its meaning is: there is no complete prayer. This is one of the causes of jurisprudential disagreement, returning to two basic reasons: not looking at the report, or looking at the report but differing in understanding. Something like this happened to the hadith scholars themselves. For example, a hadith that so-and-so authenticated and so-and-so weakened. We assume the one who authenticated it was correct in the authentication, and the one who weakened it was wrong. Why did this one succeed and why did this one err? In many cases, the one who weakened the hadith is correct in his weakening, but it is a relative success. That is, this hadith that so-and-so authenticated, the one who weakened it looked at it from a path in which there is a weak narrator, and he did not look at the path that the first one looked at, which is a correct path. If the second one had looked at it, he would have met the first one and they would have agreed on the authenticity of the hadith. And this is very common. And sometimes the path is one, sometimes the path is one, so this one authenticates it and this one weakens it. This happens, and indeed, doubt occurs in it.